Bacterial Community Structure in Iron Particle Integrated Anammox Process

Abstract

The anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) process has been demonstrated to increase nitrogen removal efficiency and settleability when incorporating iron particles. This study investigated the changes in microbial community structure of the anammox process due to the incorporation of iron particles in the anammox process under synthetic and real wastewater conditions. Anammox granules (AGs) and iron particle-integrated anammox granules (IP-IAGs) were developed using synthetic wastewater, while a real wastewater system was operated with real wastewater partial nitritation and a real wastewater iron particle-integrated anammox granules. 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing revealed that the dominant community members and difference between each reactor. The dominant anammox genera in IP-IAGs was dominated by Ca. Brocadia and Ca. Jettenia, which was different from previous studies. Planctomycetota, Pseudomonadota, Chloroflexi, and Bacteroidota phyla were commonly dominant in AGs and IP-IAGs. However, their relative abundances were different before and after iron particle integrated. In addition, the alpha diversity and evenness of IP-IAGs were higher than AGs, confirming that the bacteria community was more diverse. The dominant anammox bacteria in previous studies were investigated to compare information about the anammox community. Furthermore, this study provides insights into the most suitable primers for quantifying anammox bacteria to characterize the anammox processes.